COMPASSION A policeman helps clean up one of the girls found locked inside a shanty in Zamboanga City. —PHOTO GRABBED FROM VIDEO OF DARYLL CANILLO
ZAMBOANGA CITY — Officials of Canelar village here rescued two girls locked inside a shanty near Zamboanga City International Airport and starving on Christmas Eve.
One of the girls was 9 years old and emaciated, while the other was still a toddler.
Vincent Paolo Lozano, Canelar village councilor and head of the peace and order committee, said workers found the two children inside a locked house “malnourished and begging for food.”
He said the workers turned to the village chief’s office for help.
Village officials were sent to the area and knocked on the house door but to no avail.
They forced the door open, and the sight of the two starving girls shocked them.
“What shocked us was these two girls were starving, and their feces were on a plate,” Lozano said.
“Their faces were all covered with feces,” Lozano added.
“The house was unkempt. There was no light or water, and the two children were locked up,” he said.
There was no adult at the house at the time, he said.
Village officials reported the case to the city police and the girls, after being fed, were brought to the police Women and Children’s Division.
Lozano said he asked police to give the girls to social workers, but he learned that the children had been turned over to their parents.
The village chair is requesting police to investigate how the girls ended up wasted at home.
He said the shanty was “full of used drug paraphernalia.”
“That, in itself, is one big reason not to hand over those girls to their parents,” Lozano said.
“Imagine, while everyone is celebrating Christmas, we see two children starving,” Lozano added. —Julie Alipala